The Roman Catholic Church has had to deal with many accusations of sexual abuse by their clergy in dioceses all around the
world. The following is a brief overview of some notable cases.
Canada
Charles Sylvestre might be one of the worst pedophile priests in Canadian history, but he's not the first.
Mount Cashel
Mount Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland.
More than a dozen priests were convicted after decades of abusing young boys at the former Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John's,
Newfoundland. The orphanage closed in 1989, just six months after allegations of sexual and physical abuse were published
by the media.
In 2005, the Diocese of St. George in Newfoundland almost sold off all of its property after agreeing to pay $13 million to
40 victims of Reverend Kevin Bennett, who was convicted in 1990 of hundreds of sexual assaults dating back to 1961.
Another major Canadian scandal happened in Cornwall, Ontario, involving allegations that a ring of pedophiles had operated
there since the late 1950s. In 1992, a former altar boy came forward to say he had been sexually abused by two Roman Catholic
priests in the late 1960s.
Police followed up on the complaint, and in 2001, Ontario Provincial Police charged 15 people with 100 charges including gross
indecency and sexual assault. Only one person was ever convicted in the scandal, but in 2005 Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty
announced he was establishing the Cornwall Public Inquiry. It began on February 16, 2006, and continues today.
United States
Parishes throughout the U.S. have been rocked by sex abuse scandals in recent years. The most notorious, perhaps, is the Archdiocese
of Boston, where in 2002 priest John Geoghan, facing accusations of abuse by more than a hundred alleged victims, was convicted
for sexual abusing a ten-year-old boy.
His trial helped shine light on a systemic crisis of clergy sexual abuse and an institutional pattern of shuffling abusive
priests from parish to parish instead of turning them over to police. Cardinal Bernard Law, who had been the Archbishop of
Boston for almost 20 years, was forced to resign over his handling of the abuse allegations.
Even before 2002, however, American dioceses were discovering the widespread problem of clergy sexual abuse. Allegations that
cropped up in Lafayette, Louisiana in 1985 are considered to be have provoked a wave of revelations about clergy sexual abuse
that swept through dioceses in Chicago, Dallas, Fort Worth, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
In 2004, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned a wide-ranging study into the nature and scope of the
problem of sexual abuse of minors by clergy. That 120-page study identified 4,392 priests accused of sexual abuse between
1950 and 2002, and estimated that American dioceses had paid out more than $420 million to compensate alleged victims.
England
The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales faced its own clergy sex abuse crisis in the late 1990s, when 25 priests (out
of 5,600) were convicted.
Though the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales had established a fledgling sexual policy in 1994, it proved ineffective,
and in 2000, Archbishop Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, invited British judge Lord Nolan to help examine
and review arrangements made for child protection and the prevention of abuse within the Church, and to make recommendations.
Those recommendations came out in 2001 and were reviewed last year.
There were 132 allegations of sexual abuse clergy in 2002, but according to the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children
and Young Adults, that number has declined steadily ever since. In 2004, for example, 111 alleged victims came forward; 56
came forward in 2005.
Ireland
At least 20 Irish priests were convicted between 1992 and 2002, according to BBC reports, forcing Cardinal Desmond Connell,
then the head of Ireland's Roman Catholic Church, to express "deep regret" for "inadequacies" in church responses to allegations
of child sex abuse by priests. Church officials agreed to investigate all complaints of sexual abuse dating back 60 years.
Ultimately, sex scandals would force all but one seminary to close and force one bishop to resign amidst criticism of his
handling of abuse by clergy in his diocese.
In 2005, the Irish Bishops' Conference published Our Children, Our Church, a set of policies and procedures for protecting
children and young people within the church that is to be put into effect in every diocese.
The CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites.
Pope Benedict, in one of his most forthright comments so far on a sexual abuse scandal that has created turmoil in the Church,
said on Tuesday that the greatest threat to Catholicism came from "sin within the Church".
Following are revelations in the major abuse scandals:
IRELAND: May 2009 - The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse issued a five-volume report sying that priests abused children
for decades in Catholic-run institutions.
Nov. 2009 - The government-commissioned Murphy report into abuse in Dublin from 1975 to 2004 said church authorities covered
up cases of child sexual abuse until the mid-1990s.
Feb. 2010 - Benedict held crisis talks with 24 Irish bishops at the Vatican. The bishops promised him they were committed
to cooperating with authorities.
March 2010 - Benedict apologised to victims of child sex abuse by Irish clergy, saying he felt "shame and remorse". He also
announced a formal Vatican investigation of Irish dioceses, seminaries and religious orders. Irish victims accused the pope
of evading the question of Vatican responsibility.
March 24 - The pope accepted the resignation of Bishop John Magee of Cloyne, accused of mishandling reports of sexual abuse
in his diocese. He later accepted the resignation of two other Irish bishops.
UNITED STATES: June 2002 - The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops agreed to bar paedophile priests from ever again acting
as clerics, but not necessarily to expel them from the priesthood.
Feb. 2004 - Independent researchers said 10,667 people accused U.S. priests of child sex abuse from 1950 to 2002. More than
17 percent of accusers had siblings who were also abused.
July 2007 - Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay $660 million to 500 victims of sexual abuse dating as far back as the
1940s, the largest compensation deal of its kind.
April 2008 - Benedict met victims of abuse by priests during his visit to the United States. The U.S. church has paid $2 billion
in settlements to victims since 1992.
March 2010 - The Vatican criticised The New York Times for its coverage of the scandals. The Vatican denied any cover-up in
the abuse of 200 deaf boys by Reverend Lawrence Murphy from the 1950s to 1960s after the newspaper reported he was not defrocked
despite warnings sent to the Vatican and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then the church's top doctrinal official, now Pope Benedict.
* GERMANY: More than 250 people in Germany were abused at Church-run schools in past decades. The scandal has drawn in Bavarian-born
Benedict, whose brother ran a Regensburg choir for 30 years which has been linked to cases of abuse.
Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, Germany's top Catholic bishop, apologised in March for mistakes he made himself in failing to
report to authorities one case of suspected abuse by a priest in the Freiburg diocese nearly 20 years ago.
Bishop Walter Mixa of Augsburg in Bavaria resigned, the first bishop to quit in the pope's native Germany over the child abuse
scandal. He was accused of sexually abusing minors.
SWITZERLAND: The Diocese of Chur, in eastern Switzerland, said on March 20 it was investigating around 10 complaints. The
abbot of a monastery in the diocese said at least three of the 77 monks at Einsiedeln had committed acts of abuse since he
took office in Dec. 2001, but no legal action had been taken.
NETHERLANDS: A newspaper said three priests from the Salesian order abused pupils decades ago at a boarding school near the
Dutch-German border.
AUSTRIA - A wave of reports of child sexual abuse in Austrian Catholic institutions was triggered by the resignation of the
arch-abbot of Salzburg's St Peter's monastery in March after admitting to sexually abusing a boy 40 years ago.
AUSTRALIA -- July 2008 - On a visit to Australia, Pope Benedict apologised for sex abuse by clergy. At that time there had
been 107 convictions for abuse in the Catholic church there.
BRITAIN - July 2000 - London Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor acknowledged making a mistake in a previous post in the 1980s
by allowing a paedophile priest to continue working. The priest was jailed in 1997 for abusing nine boys.
BELGIUM - Roger Vangheluwe, the bishop of Bruges, resigned on April 23 after admitting he had sexually abused a boy more than
20 years ago when in charge of the Bruges diocese.
MEXICO - Pope Benedict ordered an inquiry into the Legionaries of Christ priestly order in March 2009 whose founder was discovered
to be a sexual molester. In 2006, the pope told the founder, Father Marcial Maciel, to retire to a life of "prayer and penitence".
Maciel died in 2008. His order acknowledged in 2009 he had fathered at least one child with a mistress and formally apologised
to his victims in March 2010. Benedict will appoint a special envoy to run and reform the order, the Vatican said on May 1.
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